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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, spices, raisins, currants, citron, and brandy, baked for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, butter, eggs, and flour until well combined.

  2. Stir in the brandy and black molasses.

  3. Add the ground cinnamon, cloves, allspice, black pepper, and nutmeg, mixing well.

  4. Dredge the raisins, currants, and sliced citron in flour, then fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for 4 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat that coats the flour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning during the long bake.
Black molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredge the fruit in flour before folding. Flour coating helps keep heavy raisins, currants, and citron from sinking to the bottom of the batter, so the fruit spreads evenly through the cake as it bakes.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, flour, brandy, molasses, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, brandy, molasses, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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